Tyler's division halted at the Stone Bridge and silently formed as the first glow of dawn tinged the eastern hills.
The dull red of the July sun was just coloring the sky with its flame when the second and third divisions crossed Bull Run at Sudley's Ford and began their swift descent upon the rear of the unsuspecting Southern army.
As the sun burst above the hills, a circle of white smoke suddenly curled away from a cannon's mouth above the Stone Bridge and slowly rose in the still, clear morning air. Its sullen roar echoed over the valley. The gray figures on the hill beyond leaped to their feet and looked. Only the artillery was engaged and their shots were falling short.
The Confederates appeared indifferent. The action was too obviously a feint. Colonel Evans was holding his regiment for a clearer plan of battle to develop. From the hilltop on which his men lay he scanned with increasing uneasiness the horizon toward the west. In the far distance against the bright Southern sky loomed the dark outline of the Blue Ridge. The heavy background brought out in vivid contrast the woods and fields, hollows and hills of the great Manassas plain in the foreground.
Suddenly he saw it—a thin cloud of dust rising in the distance. As the rushing wall of sixteen thousand men emerged from the "Big Forest," through which they had worked their way along the crooked track of a rarely used road, the dust cloud flared in the sky with ominous menace.
Colonel Evans knew its meaning. Beauregard's army had been flanked and the long thin lines of his left wing were caught in a trap. When the first rush of the circling host had swept his little band back from the Stone Bridge Tyler's army would then cross and the three divisions swoop down on the doomed men.
Evans suddenly swung his regiment and two field pieces into a new line of battle facing the onrushing host and sent his courier flying to General Bee to ask that his brigade be moved instantly to his support.
When the shock came there were five regiments and six little field pieces in the Southern ranks to meet McDowell's sixteen thousand troops.